#20: Azula is Desensitized to Horror Films (Semi-Modern AU)
Prompted By: Streetlight Eyes

"Oh, Agni!" Ty Lee shrieks, possibly waking the entire palace of servants and royals. "How? Was that ─ they just removed his entire jaw!"

Princess Azula and her paramour are situated in Azula's dark bedroom, lit by a ruby lava lamp. The expensive television is playing a gruesome scene where a Fire Nation soldier is being ripped to bits by the overly buff hands of a scarred man dressed in rags. Ty Lee has cried twice already, but is clinging on in hopes of not distressing her date.

What Azula wants, she gets.

"I know. I'm watching. Sh." Azula's lips brush against Ty Lee's, although her golden eyes are still focused on the television screen.

It is a gory slasher about a group of promiscuous Fire Nation teenagers in the colonies who are hunted down by a gruesomely deformed earthbender. When Azula agreed to go on a date with Ty Lee after conquering Ba Sing Se, Ty Lee certainly did not imagine it involving so much blood and guts. She imagined it more along the line of glowing blue scented candles and maybe some rice wine.

"Azula, I'm too scared," Ty Lee whispers, clamping her hands over her eyes. Azula sighs haughtily. "I can't do this anymore."

"There are thirty minutes left in the movie. That's just enough time for that girl to beat the killer and escape. I mean, everyone else is dead already," Azula explains as if speaking to a child or pet. "You made it through the scene where he crushed all of that boy's bones into bits, you can make it through the running and tripping scene."

"How are you not terrified?" Ty Lee wraps herself tightly around Azula's slender form.

"Once you start, it stops being disturbing. Sometimes they aren't gory enough," Azula sighs, studying her nails and trying to hide the blush on her cheeks in the glow of the lamp. "I mean, none of this bothers me anymore. I've seen public executions more exciting."

Ty Lee buries her face in Azula's shoulder and tries not to hear the labored screams of the last girl. A good Fire Nation nationalist from the homeland, daughter of a decorated admiral and virgin. Of course her traitorous friends were the first to go.

"No, you have to watch. Watch, she's about to burn him alive, Ty Lee," Azula whispers into the ear of her violently shaking girlfriend.

"I can't do it..." Ty Lee keeps her eyes closed tightly as Azula lifts her and positions her to face the scream.

"And you missed it," Azula sighs and Ty Lee opens her eyes just to see flames erupting from the last girl's hands and engulfing the howling earthbender. The melting on his flesh is almost as realistic as watching it in real life.

"I didn't miss it! You're a liar, Azula! I'm going to have so many ─ do all faces look like that when they melt? ─ nightmares!" Ty Lee howls, her eyes swelling with tears.

"It's over. Relax; it's over. We'll watch your Real Housewives of Caldera or whatever," Azula says faux sweetly, kissing Ty Lee on her trembling lips.

"Would you ever let that terrible killer get me?" Ty Lee asks in a high, seductive tone as the kiss breaks, sitting on Azula's lap.

"Probably not. Although it always has been a dream of mine for all my friends to be murdered and I defeat the killer and get all the glory," Azula says airily and Ty Lee makes a small whimpering sound. "I promise I won't let any rogue earthbenders kill you."

Azula presses the remote and turns on a reality show with two women tearing at each other's hair.

"You know," Azula whispers as Ty Lee gulps and tries to look at the bright colors of the suburban Caldera manor, "I once read that fear and arousal have the same biological reaction."

They fall back onto Azula's crimson bed.